Overview
Explore collisions in two dimensions. Choose two marbles, ball bearings, or other rigid spheres. They need not be identical, but at lease one of them should be at least 2cm in diameter. Construct an apparatus that lets you launch the smaller marble, call it m1, towards the larger one (m2) at a controlled velocity; you may follow the example with the ruler from section 7.3 of the textbook, or use any other convenient guide rail. Mark a reference line along the path m1 follows when there is no collision and call this line ?=0.
If you place m2 exactly on this line, the marbles collide in one dimension and you can predict the outcome easily. If, however, you offset m2 slightly from the center of the line, the two marbles collide off-center and recoil at different angles ?1 and ?2. Measure the dependence of ?2 on theta1. Repeat the experiment several times with different offsets of m2, measuring both recoil angles, and plot one versus the other. What trends can you identify in the graph? If you measure the masses of the marbles or the initial velocity of m1, you can predict the dependence of ?2 vs theta1; do your measured data conform to expectations?